CHAPTER THREE : girls on film

( holly, jolly, part i )

november 9, 1983

     NEVER IN HER LIFE, at least in her newly free life, did Allison think she'd be happy for a day to be so completely and utterly boring. The hours between stirring awake and the bell ringing to signify the start of lunch were nothing but uneventful.

     The boy from the night before, Jonathan Byers, she had found out, hadn't attempted to approach her in the hallway when they crossed paths between first and second period, and Mr Smithy didn't have a go at her for messing up yet another question in class. All in all, the day was pretty damn good, so far.

     However, she couldn't lie and say she wasn't a little worried — Barb hadn't shown up to Smithy's class, and she wasn't there for second-period English with Nancy either. It was like she had just vanished into thin air, no trace left behind in her wake. That was all Allison could think about as she walked through the school halls and into the cafeteria to sit with her friends ( question mark. she still can't tell if they actually like her ) as they rattled on about whatever nonsense was on their minds.

     The first thing she notices upon arriving at the table is that Carol has her leg hiked up onto it, showing off a nasty-looking wound on her ankle. Allison winces at the sight of it.

     Steve catches her eye. "She thinks she has frostbite," he explains around a spoonful of pudding.

     Allison takes a proper look at the lesion and determines it not to be frostbite. Three had given himself frostbite about a million times while he'd learnt to control his powers and those wounds looked entirely unlike whatever Carol's got.

     "No, I swear. Look at this. It's totally frostbite," Carol insists, gesturing at her leg. Nobody regards her with a response for a moment — Steve instead focuses his attention on passing his pudding cup over to Tommy, and Allison pulls up a chair at the head of the table, keeping the seat next to Steve free for Nancy to sit at. She arrives only a second later, immediately plonking down in the empty chair with her lunch tray.

     Tommy thanks Steve for the snack before turning to his girlfriend, taking a spoonful of the dessert as he speaks. "It's a heated pool."

     Carol shrugs her shoulders. "Well, if it's not frostbite, then what is it?"

     "Bug bite?" Allison suggests. She's instantly regarded with a glare that makes her regret speaking, a hot, tense flare rushing up the back of her neck.

     Steve lets out a low groan. "I don't care what it is, it's disgusting," he says, swatting at the air in Carol's direction. "Get it off the table, we're eating here." Tommy reaches forward with his spoon, trying to poke the wound with it but Carol slaps his hand away before he can make contact, and finally puts her leg back onto the floor where it belongs.

     "Hey, Tommy," Nancy begins, leaning in closer. "When you left, did you see Barb?"

     The freckled boy stares blankly at her. "What?"

     "Barbara. She's not here today," Nancy presses.

     Tommy's gaze doesn't waver. "I seriously have no idea who you're talking about." Carol snorts, ducking her head in a vague attempt to hide her grin. The remainder of the teenagers stare at the couple blankly.

     "Come on, don't be an ass, man," Steve says with a shake of his head. "Did you see her leave last night or what?"

     Tommy and Carol stop laughing. "No, she was gone when we left." He pauses and looks at Allison for a moment. "Did you ask Ginger over here?"

     Allison doesn't bother giving Tommy the satisfaction of her response, turning towards Nancy instead. "I went inside for a minute and she completely disappeared."

     "She probably couldn't stand listening to all that moaning," Carol giggles. She starts moaning out Steve's name in a high-pitched voice. Allison slinks down in her seat as those walking by and sitting at nearby tables turn to see what all the commotion is about. To make matters worse, Tommy joins in by thumping on the table, making Allison's unopened juice box wobble. Allison looks around the cafeteria beneath the shield of one of her hands until she makes eye contact with Eddie.

     One of his brows is raised and he's forcing himself to frown so he doesn't burst out laughing at the display. You're no help, Allison thinks.

     Steve waves his hand to make Carol and Tommy finally shut up, wiping his smirk from his face before he turns to face Nancy. "Listen, I'm sure she's fine. She's probably just, like, skipping or something."

     "Yeah. Yeah, probably," Nancy says, but from her tone, Allison gathers that that's probably not the case. Besides, Barb doesn't seem like she's physically capable of being even a minute tardy, much less able to skip an entire school day.

     Something across the room catches Nancy's eye and Allison looks up to follow her gaze. It's Jonathan Byers, standing in the doorway to the cafeteria, one hand on the strap of his bag.

     Allison averts her eyes. "I'm gonna go to the bathroom," she says, jumping up from her seat. She leaves her tray of food but stuffs her juice box into her baggy jeans pocket.

     Jonathan's not in the doorway anymore, but he can't be that far. As Allison emerges into the corridor, Jonathan catches her firey hair in his periphery and turns back around to face her, eyes wide. "Hi. Uh, about last night."

     Allison takes just one measured step closer. "Nothing happened last night. Trick of the light, okay?" she says.

     She could do more. Take him into an empty room and threaten him to destroy the photo. Raise his body temperature until his organs melt. Light his entire camera and every photo on it on fire. But judging by the look in the boy's eyes, what she's said is enough. He doesn't need to be tortured to do what she asks. The desperation in her voice is all it takes. "I'll get rid of the photo."

     "Thank you." She turns and heads for the bathroom, taking a shaky breath of relief.

     Any minute now, the Lab's lackeys could come asking about her. One less piece of physical evidence tying Allison-the-high-school-student to Zero-the-experiment. But, it's fine. Jonathan will destroy it and everything will be alright.

☆☆☆

     She isn't entirely sure how it happened, but instead of immediately going home with Eddie after school, Allison finds herself leaning against a janky, old car with Steve, Tommy, Carol, and another redheaded girl she had never met before. Nobody had told her what was going on when they ambushed her at her locker and ushered her outside with them, but judging by context clues, mainly the other redhead — Nicole — going on and on about Jonathan and the photo lab, Allison can't help but being a little tense. If she had seen that photo, Allison's only choice would be to run and not look back, find her way to another town and hole up.

     All of her muscles are prepped and ready to bolt if she needs to.

     Steve's sitting on the back of the car, staring into nothingness along with Allison, while the rest of the group chatter away. The second Jonathan arrives at, what must be, his car, Steve hops to his feet. "Hey, man."

     Jonathan looks at each of the five teenagers. "What's going on?" he asks, his voice shaking just as much as his hands.

     "Nicole was just, uh, telling us about your work," Steve says.

     "We've heard great things," Carol adds.

     "Yeah, sounds cool," says Tommy.

     They both look at Allison for a comment but she just nods, wide-eyed. Please not the photo.

     "And we'd just love to take a look. You know, as—" he looks around aimlessly for a moment, purses his lips, "—connoisseurs of art."

     "I don't know what you're talking about," Jonathan mutters. He tries to push through the group to get to the driver's side door of his car but Tommy swiftly snatches his satchel right off his shoulder. Jonathan spins around. "Please, give me my bag."

     As Jonathan approaches Tommy, his arm extended to take his bag back, the freckled boy tosses the satchel over to Steve. "Man, he is, like, totally trembling. He must really have something to hide," Steve chuckles. "Here we go," he says, placing the bag on top of the trunk of Jonathan's car, and pulling out a stack of black and white photos.

     Allison freezes as she looks at the stack over her shoulder, still leaning against the car in the same position she had been in for the past ten minutes. She turns her gaze to Jonathan, eyes big and pleading. He returns her look and, regretfully, shakes his head. The photo is still in there.

     "Here we go," Steve repeats, holding the photos up in the air, beginning to flip through them, concern increasing as he gets further and further through the stack. "Oh, man," he mutters.

     Allison's leg begins to bounce.

     "Let me see," Tommy says with a guffaw. Steve takes the photo from the top of the stack and hands the rest over to Tommy.

     Well, if it's that easy. Allison holds out her hand. "Gimme."

     Tommy splits the stack in two and hands one of the smaller stacks to her. She flips through the pictures, looking for one of her by herself, and thankfully finds it nestled between one of Barb sitting on the diving board on her own, and one from the beginning of the party from where Steve had placed it during his initial search.

     Why Jonathan even has these photos, Allison can't begin to imagine.

     She makes sure that Carol and Nicole can't see over her shoulder as she slides the photo out and messily shoves it into the back pocket of her too-big jeans.

     "Yeah, this isn't creepy at all," Carol comments, flipping through some photos she had also grabbed from Tommy's stack.

     "I was looking for my brother," Jonathan argues. His fists clench at his sides.

     Steve shakes his head. "No," he starts. "No, this is called stalking."

     "What's going on?"

     Allison hadn't noticed Nancy strolling over from the school building until her voice announced her presence. The rest of the group turns to her with mischievous smirks plastered on each of their faces.

     "Here's the starring lady," Tommy comments.

     Nancy's brows furrow. "What?"

     Carol steps forward, brandishing a print in her hand. "This creep was spying on us last night. He was probably gonna save this one for later." She passes the photo to Nicole, who gives it to Nancy. Nancy takes it tentatively, staring down at the picture in shock.

     Allison looks up at Jonathan, trying to figure out what the picture is of without having seen it herself, but his eyes are on the ground. It must be something shameful. Papa had said that you only keep your eyes down if you have something to hide. Carol reaches over to snatch the rest of the photos from Allison's ever-tightening grip. With a jolt, Allison turns to look back at the group, pulling her sweater further over the lump of paper in her back pocket.

     Steve clucks his tongue against the roof of his mouth. "See, you can tell that he knows it was wrong, but... man, that's the thing about perverts." He steps forward and scrunches up his face. "It's hard-wired into them." He takes another step, now getting all up close and personal with Jonathan. He reaches out and starts messing with the trembling boy's clothes. "You know, they just can't help themselves." Steve holds up one of Jonathan's photos and tears it into little pieces. Tommy lets out a loud laugh. "So, we'll just have to take away his toy."

     "No, please, not the camera," Jonathan begs, trying to make a break for his bag. Tommy lunges forward to stop the boy in his tracks as Steve spins around to dig through Jonathan's satchel.

     "No, no, wait, wait, Tommy, Tommy. It's okay," Steve says, seemingly conceding. He holds the camera out to Jonathan like a peace offering. "Here you go, man." The younger boy reaches out but before he can make contact with the device, Steve lets it tumble from his fingers.

     No.

     About half a foot from the ground, the camera stops its descent, hovering in midair. After a brief second, just long enough to make the six teenagers stare at it in disbelief, it drops the rest of the way. The lens cracks but the device remains intact.

     "What the fuck?" Tommy mumbles.

     Steve blinks at the camera once. He shakes his head and without waiting another second, raises his foot and smashes the thing to bits. "Come on, let's go. The game's about to start."

     Allison keeps her head down as, one by one, the rest of the group leaves. A drop of blood hits the asphalt where she stands and she lifts her right hand to wipe her nose.

     Once they're alone, Jonathan drops to his knees to try to gather the pieces of his shattered camera, as well as the photos that survived the wrath of the popular teenagers.

     Allison steps forward and digs into her pocket, pulling out the crumpled picture, and offers it over. "Here," she says, eyes glued to the carnage at her feet. She really tried to help and she still failed.

     The way she's holding the photo makes it impossible for her to hide the contents from Nancy, who gets a good long look at it — at her. She doesn't back away, even after seeing the fire blazing from her fingertips in the picture.

     Jonathan sighs and shakes his head. "You keep it."

     Slowly, Allison nods. She crumples the picture into a ball and, hoping, praying, that neither Nancy nor Jonathan will freak, considering what they've already seen, burns the thing to ashes. When she opens her fist, black dust and grey smoke fly away with the breeze.

     Her attention is drawn to the side of the school, where Eddie is now leaning against his van and raising his hand toward her.

     "I have to go. I'm sorry," Allison says, turning to leave.

     "Wait," Nancy says. "The camera. Was that you?"

     Allison hesitates. She's already too far gone at this point but saying it will make it really, really real. She decides to plead, "Please don't say anything."

     And she goes.

     "We won't tell anyone," Nancy calls back.

     The look on Nancy's face when Allison checks over her shoulder is anything but deceitful, but it only lasts a second before Steve shouts her name and sends her scrambling back to his side.

a/n
i saw my lucky number like a million times today so it's only RIGHT that i get y'all an update, y'know?

i rly loved writing this chapter back in the day, and i really loved rewriting it now. last time i had like, no, reference to allison using her powers at all but i had to go ahead and give her some cool superhero moments, and i loved giving allison + nancy + jonathan a lil moment together before the inevitable team up.

thank u for reading! much love!

published: august 28, 2022
re-published: september 3, 2024
word count: 2.6k